europeans, they were well educated, emigrating to the u.s.. last year there were only three within the group by participated in. my colleague graduated in u.s., spending $200,000 of her own money on education. she went back to europe, and in these other countries that have no immigration -- no education and the immigration is a policy provided to the u.s.. guest: our population is multifaceted. our program shows that every time a child is given the chance, they can learn. in arkansas there was not much of a european population.

all of those kids were achieving. the poverty level was 85%. we are proving again that kids can achieve, given the proper courses and teacher training. host: tom luce, thank you for talking to our viewers. guest: thank you. host: go to our website, c- span.org, to find out the events we are covering today in washington. the president will give his back to school speech at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. a stakeout after meeting with caucus members with mitch mcconnell after the meeting on the small business bill. live coverage on c-span 2. thank you for watching. ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] .

21st century. it's a day-long sem far, hosted by the civil rights excision. we'll have live coverage. and the u.s. house returns from its summer recess today.

they will consider bills. a measure to let the navy secretary sign multi year contracts for fighter jets. our live coverage will begin at 2:00 eastern. with the house and senate back in session, follow congress using the c-span video library's congressional chronicle. just click on congress. with the midterm elections ahead, it's a great resource for anyone who follows congress. it's all free, anytime. watch what you want, when you want. the u.s. commission on civil rights is hosting a day-long look at what's happening with civil rights now. this morning retired columnist spoke. his comments are about a half an hour.

>> i want to throw a couple things out that may help us get started today. maybe a few requests i could make of this gathering. and the panel to follow. the first is that we all try as hard as we can to make this a day of discussion . not merely ancient debates. that we resist the temptation to score points off one another. it's great, and i do hope,

jerry, you agree with this, that we consider analyses, our comments, and our proposals from the point of view of what is best for the coming disadvantaged minorities. what's going to work best for them? for our kids? i make these requests not to insult or offend you, but because i've become painfully aware of a dis maying trend that's overtaking all our important discussions from climate change to health care to of course, racial equity. and that is the notion that it is enough to separate people into groups. us against them. which means that instead of trying to solve our mutual problems, we concentrate on defeating those we designate as "them." which leads us to exaggerate

our differences. as a substitute for thought. and to minimize our agreements as no consequence. take our subject today. hardly anyone believes that america has reached some post racial nirvana where racism has been competitor sized both from institutions and from the hearts of individuals. we know it's still there. and almost everyone would agree that what we do as individual minority members and what we encourage our children to do matters a great deal. so my humble, perhaps naive plea this morning is not that you change your minds about

what you believe but that for the next few hours you accept that at least the theoretical possibility that those that disagree with you not on that account stupid or tarnle terrible people, that they might actually have a small point. i don't have much time to get this conversation started, so let me set the stage with a small story. powerful, no doubt. i heard from my father a lot of years ago. a farmer on horseback was hurrying home to the homestead when the sudden downpour turned into a flash flood, and because he wasn't sure what else to do, when he came to the stream bordering his farm, he road the

horse right straight through the stream. well, the situation was worse than he anticipated. and the result was that the horse and rider were both swept down stream, both nearly drowning before they managed to clamor to safety and return to their homestead. and after that, after that, the farmer couldn't induce the horse to cross the creek even when the flow was just a trickle. my dad's point was that knowledge and experience are useful only if they are tempered by judgment. i make a slightly different point this morning. if you compare that stream to racism in america, then too many of us african-americans are like that horse.

they're personal and handed down memories of racism are so vivid, their recollections of can't cross here, deny us of opportunities so strong that they dare not enter the stream, even when it is relatively calm. they stand on the far bank, perhaps cursing the water. perhaps merely shrugging at the way things are. their remembered few tillty and danger won't let them notice that the water isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. it was bad, all right. oh, it was bad. and more than a few in our race drowned in the attempt to cross it. and now you're thinking, here comes this silly old man about to tell us that the stream is dried up.

well, no, i'm not. i recently attended a two-day conference on the difficulties facing young black then and the speakers were particular in their view that racism was alive and well in america. and one said three young men, a young man, a white and hispanic man all carefully matched for education, experience and speech and all that, he sent them to a series of customers. turned out the white applicant generally steaved best treatment, the hispanic second best and the african-american the worst. all three may have been granted interviews, but sometimes the white guy was offered a better job than advertised and the black guy was offered a lower job than had been advertised. no, the stream isn't dry. even when some white people

like to think it is. am i the only person that remembers that old tv series called black, white -- "black. white. " the one that had back and white families reversing roles. remember how frustrated brian, the black guy, became, when bruno, the white guy, refused to see the racism that was so clear to brian. they walked down the street together and brian would sense the racism and see? and bruno, what? both men were frustrated and bruno turned to brian and said, you know, you must be looking for racism. and of course, we are looking for it. we pounce on a glen beck or

smart mouth dr. laura as if we found the magic potion that will finally make white people understand what we have beens complaining about. we are dormede convince white america of what is a plain as day fact for us. racism abounds. the racist stream has not dried up, and maybe it never will. the point is this. you become expert at finding what you spend a lot of your time looking for. whether this is mushrooms, gold nuggets, racism or opportunity. oh, yeah. there's racism out there. but there's also unprecedented opportunity. my mind goes back to that frightened horse. the neglect and failure some of

our young people see all around them. the disrespect they often receive from cops and clerks and comics, the low expectations the world seems to have of them. even the looks they encounter. all have convinced them that the stream between them and the better life is a virtual niagara. and we who know full well that the stream is crossible often add to their dread by talking about how racist the society still is and how a black kid has a better chance of winding up dead or in prison than educated. just look at the schools, we'll say. underfunded, poorly maintained inadequately staffed. who can blame these kids if they fail?

we say it for them, onsly believing that calling the attention to the racism and unfairness will help them by absolving them of the shame of failure while simultaneously affixing the blame on the enemies over there. and what we fail to see is that we are reenforcing their self-doubt. their fear of that once-raging stream. the danger, i believe, is that our good intentions may actually have the affect of discouraging young people, i mean in the literal sense of taking away their courage to try. conservators sometimes the miss -- that there is a general dilemma.

it seems fundamentally unfair to take kids who have had none of the psychic advantages of growing up middle class and unsure and tell them they must now compete unaided with the children of privilege. but how helpful is it to take these same disadvantaged children and reward them not for achievement but for effort? as though they are participant ins some academic special olympics. some of us point to the underequip schools and underprepared teachers that are undereducating some of our children, as though that is the whole answer. others point fatherless households or the lack of exertion or to cultural distractions as though that were the whole answer. well, there has always been

both external and internal barriers to these in america, my thought is to focus not so much on the outside barers that we neglect those that are inside us. everybody has a favorite martin luther king jr quote. and no, i'm not going to have a dream this morning. but i do want to call your attention to a quote that i think is largely ignored, but that serves to make the point that i want to make this morning. and it strives towards freedom. he was talking about the very kinds of issues i was talking about. he said, in short, we must work on two fronts. on the one hand, we must

continue to resist the system, which is the basic cause of our lagging standards. on the other hand, we must work constructively to improve the standards, themselves. there must be. and i love this. there must be a rith mick all ter ration between attacking the causes and healing the effects. why don't they carve that one on somebody's cornerstone? because that's really, really says it all. saves you a little time, because these things tend to grow, so i'm going to cut this a little short. what do we tell our children? what should we tell our children and grandchildren? yes. shield them against the shock of racism.

let them know that it's very likely that something untoward will happen. yes, remind them of battles overwhich. point out to them that some of us -- in fact, most of us who have achieved some measure of success in this world likely have some mud on our boots from crossing that not-yet-dry stream. but we crossed it. tell them those things, but they will them also this. -- but tell them also this. the flight of the black american today is not the denial of opportunity. for those who would grasp it. the new and powerful truth of our situation is simply this. the stream is crossible.

the stream is crossible. that's great, good news, and it may be true for most of us for the first time in our history in this country. and we treat it as an inconvenient fact. what powerful white people use whatever they used to think about black boys and girls. corporate america today needs them. but it needs them smart. and curious. and computer-savvy. and all the obvious things that so many of our boys and girls are not getting or not becoming. we're past today when bustling factories and powerful trade unions made the mere willingness to work hard a

sufficient guarantee to gain income. these days you have to show you're -- you know something and are ready to learn more. only to make the exertion academically that athletes make let thically. some of our young people are making that exertion. i was recently in san diego at the annual conference of the national association of black journalists. and even at a time when journalism is struggling to redefine itself. when jobs are fewer in the business and where there's less emphasis on diversity and when the future of journalism itself is as cloudy as it's ever been in my lifetime, these young people are doing what they can to retool themselves. they are learning new schools. -- learning new skills, making

new contacts, calling on us old heads in the business for help and advice. it's an interesting thing about these young people. they have parents or mentors who understand the importance of being prepared even in the face of incomplete opportunity. i mean en -- i'm encouraged by parents and mentors who sacrifice and cajole and nag their children into trying hard into being twice as good as we used to say, if that's what it takes. and i am deeply distressed by the young people who are not striving, whose parents and advisors focus on how unfair things are and not on how possible things are. they are self-destructively cynical. they think they've given up on white people when in fact, they've given up on themselves. they languish on street corners

and in prisons not because they prefer those haunts, but because they doubt that much else is possible. a wise man once said whether you believe you can succeed or believe you cannot, you're right. well, sthrifle no crystal case, but success is possible. it is this orphanage that our children must hear from -- it is this fact that our children must hear from us and take to heart that we must continue to work against unfairness and racial unfairness. it's untrue to tell our children that because barack obama is in the white house the world they inhabited is suddenly fair. but i think it is worse not to

tell them that the waters have in fact, receded to the point where crossing is possible. let me end with a story of a lady finding herself in dire and undeserved financial strates. asked the lord to let her win the lottery. well, she prayed. and she prayed quite ernestly, but when they held the drawing at the end of the week, she hadn't won. next monday she's back on her knees. lord, my son may have to drop out of college, the store is seting to take my flat screen tv, and i can see by the papers that you let people less needful and less holy than i am to win major squack pots. -- major jackpots.

lord, i need to win the lahti. -- the lottery. again, nothing. lord, she said the third week. did you promise to the bear servants up lest they bash their foot against the stone, well, lord, i'm just about stone broke. i need to win the lottery. and then in the still of her room, she heard this voice. cut me a break. buy a ticket. [laughter] we've gotten very good at making demands or ernest requests or subly cases for what we need. we demand that the government improve our schools and customers cut us slack and white people stop being so racist.

nothing wrong with that. but while we are demand that other people do what they ought to do, we need to do what we ought to do. we need to remember, for example, that the most influential educational resource a child can have is a parent who cares. and we need to admit that sometimes parents are the missing ingredient in our children's success. we need to acknowledge that the culprits in our children's failure often share our skin color, our zip code, and sometimes our street address. what shall we tell the children? the stream may not be dry. but the stream is crossible. you can make it. we will help you make it.

if you try. buy a ticket. thank you, jerry. [applause] >> right now on c-span three, it's day two of the impeachment trial to have judge who was accused of taking bribes and lying under oath. the last impeachment trial was in 1999. witnesses are testifying today. in about an hour here on c-span, a look at civil rights in the 21st century a day-long sem narrow. the sem far. the we'll have live coverage. and the u.s. house returns from its summer resoast assess today. -- recess today.

a measure to let the navy secretary sign multi-year contracts for if-18 fighter jets. our coverage starts at 2:00 eastern and the senate is spending the day on small business loans. today "washington journal" looked into that measure. journ. host: senator from nebraska here to talk about the debate over this small business bill. this debate and the sleg slags was brought up. i want to show the viewers what he said and get your reaction. here it is. >> this bill is very important. it has been held up now for a couple of months. there was an article today that said small businesses were holding off on hiring because they weren't sure whether some of these tax cuts they were going to get would actually be

set up. you hear some friends on the republican side complaining that we'd get more business investment if we had more certainty. we can get this right away. pass this bill, i'll sign it into law right way. people will then feel more comfortable about hiring and making investments. host: your response. guest: no disrespect to the president but it is his leg slags that is stalling the movement. the small business bill is another perfect example.

he would free this up this hour if he would get behind appealing the 1099 amendment. he knows that. he's playing around here. we hear the rhetoric. the reality is if he would signal that he was going to ease up on the paperwork requirements on the healthcare bill of small, medium sized even large businesses. >> if there's an alternative amendment. if both of those fail, are you voting no? guest: it's a tough call for me. i feel strongly that the best thing we can do for small

businesses is to back off and give them the opportunity to grow their businesses. instead, this administration has done the opposite. there in lies a serious problem helping grow and higher. who has the best policies. why not signal your support.

guest: i would tell you small businesses today need another loan like they need a kick in the pants. they are struggling. they need people to back off. every state and local government will have to final a 1099 if you pump more per year from any v d vendor. why would you do that.

that really is the right policy. they have only put this there to raise things. now we are in a situation where we will try to get the votes to try to repeal that in tens of thousands of businesses have said, look, back and repeal this. i would say very clearly today if that passes, i intend to vote for the bill. it is a much tougher call. the white house is all over this. they are demanding a vote. they back an alternative for

that. in all due respect for the colleague is really worse. here is why. it picks winners and loosers. if you have 24 employees, you don't have the requirements. if you have 26, you do. a huge disincentive there. it doesn't apply to another area of the economy. services would be covered. property is not. really what it is is a loyalty vote. he doesn't want anybody messing

around on the health bill. it really is more complicated. why would we do that. if you end up voting no on this small business bill, are you concerned at all about the rahm if i indications of arguing if you don't extend the tax cuts, that is really going to influence businesses. then you turn around and vote against a small business bill. >> they don't sign off on the

1099 provision. you mentioned the tax cuts. when you peel this back, you start to realize that if you don't extend these tax cuts, you have an increase. that is the last thing you want to do. the budget director will say. you pull in small businesses because many of them file on the tax return. host: the minoritity leader in the house on sunday on one of the tax shows it says he

admitted only 3% of small businesses would pay higher taxes under the obama proposal. guest: here is the problem with the boehner approach. i think he's wrong on this stand point. you have to look at the number of employers impacted. on the 1099 provision, there are about 400,000 businesses impacted. 93 million people are employed in that group. you literally jeopardize the 93

million. this has been our tax policy for a decade. this is how our ee on my has formed itself. you change that. what you've got is the increase during time host: let's go to the phone calls for you and we'll come back and talk more about your amendment on the floor today. on the democratic line. go ahead. caller: thank you greta and thank you c-span. i'd like to ask the senator a couple of questions and make a comment. seeing as they have done such a great job with the meet packing industry in nebraska, would you represent bringing in all the illegal alians, i wonder if he wants to go into this 1099

business. the reason that's there is so the condition cannot call all these illegals subcontractors. that's what they've been doing. they've been paying them as cash and checks so they don't have to put them on the payroll. that's the reason they are fighting it so hard, the republicans, it will put a stop to a lot of illegal workers. guest: that's a stretch. i haven't heard that one yet. even if that one were adopted, keep in mind that businesses and 25 and under employees and transactions under $5,000 will be exempted. i don't think it's the republican conspiracy that you are claiming.

the other thing i would tell you is look, i've taken a hard lying position here. i certainly support legal immigration. most people do, my grandparents came from poland. this isn't about that. when the church you attend on sunday will have to trace all of its pu purchases to sow if theyo over $600. it simply hurts the job creators. host: michigan on the republican line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. mr. johannas just contradicted

himself saying the church you belong to will have to do this. if it is under 25 people. i don't know many chimps that are employing 25 people. this tax cut that was supposed to have started what bush had done to create jobs. that never happened. it went to the corporations to save them money and the richest people to save them money and the rest of us suffered. guest: gosh, again, i'll have to disagree with you. i happened to be in the cabinet with president bush in 2007. that's the-year the united states brought in the largest amount of revenue in the nation's history.

what did i just say there? with these tax policies in place. why? i learned lock ago there's two things you look at. one is how many jobs that are being created out there. economy was doing very well. revenue was pouring in. here's what i would say to all these people out there. i think you are wrong. you are wrong from this stand point. grow the economy, expand the base. more people employed pay the taxes that fuel the funding and then the second thing. very, very important piece here. as a former governor and mayor, tell you i've looked at this budget. it's not a revenue problem, it's a spending problem.

we conned grow this country fast enough to keep up with president oba obama's spending. all i have to tell him is if he is going to impact this budget, he has to pull back on the spending. it's not a revenue problem, it really is a spending problem. . .

that while this tax policy was in place, because, again, it was passed in 2001 and 2003, we got the largest revenues in our nation's history. how did that happen? jobs were being created. people were employed. you're going to have a lot more revenue come in if you have unemployment come in at 5% versus some, which is where this president was at. so what we really need to do is focus in on this deficit as a long-term sort of proposition, and the last thing you want to do is hammer the job creators at a time when we need economic growth. and again, check out the year 2007. in 2007 we brought in the largest revenue in history with these taxes.

host: amy, independent line, you're next. caller: yes. i'm calling mr. johansson with all due respect, i think i heard yesterday president obama has already decreased the deficit by 8%. and as far as jobs being created during the bush years, i believe he created out of eight years, a million jobs or whatever. i think that's approximately how many jobs they ridiculous, because they weren't hiring during the bush years either. that's not even equal to the amount they had coming in. guest: amy, you're a loyal

partisan, i have to say that, but nothing you said is accurate. that's just the reality of it. you compare the unemployment of the bush years to where we are at today, and i have to tell you i don't see anything in the obama administration that's going to change that. we're hovering at about so%. and amy, i was across the state in august. we did 14 town hall meetings. i've done business round tables and had a small business woman tell me i have right under 50 entries. i've studied that health care bill and i'm not going to expand beyond 50 employees, because i don't want the get tangled up in that health care bill. we're discovering things about this health care bill, like the 1099 provision that are job

killers. they hammer the job creators. and unless this president moves away from these policies, this really strong anti-business agenda, it's hard for me to imagine, again, as a former mayor, as a former governor that was responsible for creating the atmosphere that a lot of company -- a lot of companies make jobs, they are having too many requirements and regulations and consequently, businesses are just sitting on their findings, sitting on resources that could otherwise be used to expand, grow the economy, create the jobs that are necessary to get people back to work. >> i'm going to read a tweet then go to a phone call. host: a tweet from a viewer that says they are challenging you on the increase in revenues during the bush tax era and tax

cuts and saying we almost that had largest deficit at the same time. guest: well, that wouldn't be true. the record deficit was set by president obama again, in fact, president obama would have created larger deficits than every president before him in the history of this nation. now that's hard to believe. it's hard that you could spend that kind of torrid pace that you could borrow at that kind of torrid pace, but in fact, that's what the records show. and i checked the numbers recently. if you go back to 2007, and i happen to be in the cabinet at the time the large e revenue in our nation's history came in during that time and this tax policy was in place. why? grow the economic base. that's really what you want to do. put people back to work. people that are working, pay income taxes. they pay state taxes and a

whole mortgage and property taxes and as a former elected official and as the governor, that's the best way to generate economic prosperity. last thing i should mention here. in my state, the state of nebraska, our unemployment has remained at a% or under. that's too -- at 5% or under. that's too high for us. we'd like to have it lower. how did that come about? we said to business, we want you to come to our state and create jobs, expand your employment base and we don't borrow money. literally. we don't owe anybody anything, and we balance our budget every year. that may be a novel idea to the obama administration, but i tell you, it works. and our state is always ready for economic growth and always ready to welcome businesses to our state to create jobs that

keep people employed. host: don on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. good morning senator. >> good morning. caller: i'm watching you on tv. i had to get past the operator. my question is how nebraska is going to do in 2010 and about a billion dollar industry in small business is going to be there, and i think nebraska will do great. welcome aboard cornhuskers from the great state of ohio, buckeye company. guest: well, thank you for that nice welcome. and we look forward to that, and maybe our paths will cross some time when you are watching the football game, and i am also. host: elmer, democratic line. good morning. caller: yes. good morning. i have one question for the senator. everybody comes up with obama care. i wonder who pays his

insurance? and his retirement? i mean, how much money will we save if he paid his own insurance? and how much money would we save if he didn't have so much pension? senator for one term, and they got a lifetime insurance. they got lifetime retirement. now could he answer that question? guest: yes. i sure can. retirement benefits for the president are specified by federal law. and i can't even tell you right now what the president's salary is. it's $400,000 and basically does get lifetime retirement. i have no idea what the obama family is on relative to an insurance plan. could very well be the plan that is available to all federal employees. and so a that is how that works. the reality is it is in a

budget somewhere. and when i tell you it's in the federal budget, that's a signal to you that somewhere, some how, taxpayers are paying for that. whether it's a retirement plan there or whether it's congress or a government employee,. host: go ahead, george. caller: i'm speaking on because i voted for obama, and the thing about it is when i voted for him, he had a lot on his plate, true. but he always talking about the middle class people and the rich people. they do not never mention about the poor people. and you know, the poor people really mostly put him in there, because people never voted before. they the ones that really put him in there. guest: if you're looking at the

statistics, there are more poor people in this administration than previously. but that is characteristic of a bad economy. i know this administration wants to believe, does everything they can to get us to believe well, we inherited all these problems, and this, that and the next thing, and you've heard that trail. all i can tell you is i've taken over administrations as mayor of lincoln for a couple of terms. i was governor of nebraska, became secretary of agriculture. it was no consolation for the people of lincoln for me to say well, i know i've been mayor for about two years, but those potholes or snow removal problems or budget problems, they are my predecessor's fault. you pay the filing fee. you run for the office. you convince people that you can be better and that you can do better, and i don't think

it's any excuse to say well, it can't be my problem, because it was caused by the last guy. i just don't think it's right. i don't think it's fair. like i said, he paid the filing fee. he convinced us he would be better, and his policies are not working. host: let's talk about the cloture your vote on your amendment. you talked about reappealing part of this new health care legislation. and i just want to read a little bit from the "wall street journal" editorial about this. and they say in the same congress, the 1099 provision is only one plank of this new health care law. but revealing the law plank-by- plank might be the right strategy. sooner or later the whole thing becomes unworkable. is that your strategy to plank-by-plank reappeal the health care issue?

guest: what i will tell you is we picked this out, because ial looked at the spall business bill and said there's some good things in this bill, but what can we do to make it better? and this 1099 bill was obvious. plus, businesses all across the nation are just crying out for relief on this. they are in a panic over this that they now would have to trace their gasoline purchases. their gas bill, their internet and electric bill. the payment it's that they make to a florist for an employee's husband's funeral. what's the they will have to do for this obama bill. i was trying to do something that would really bring relief to our job creators and help them out of a tough spot created by obama care. >> your -- takes away the

revenue source. how do you pay for that loss in revenue? >> well, there's a couple ways. we adjust the individual mandate so fewer people could be punished by that mandate. most americans would say we're for that. but that raises revenue to help pay for this. then there's the fund, the prevention fund, but in all fairness money from that fund has already been diverted by the obama administration into other areas, and i believe there will be a slush fund for that. looks like a lot like that already. looks like a tarp fund and you wake up and by galle qui they bought general motors. use it it in ways it was never intended for. so we delay the implementation of that. many are saying they are annihilateing this, taking it away from this. not at all. we're delaying implementation.

my hope is that delay will bring some structure to what this is about. the language is so large that you could buy playgrounds and say it's for government prevention. so those create the revenue source i need, because i had to find pay-fors. that's the dilemma we have with this health care bill. if you even want to change one little section of this bill, now you got to find pay-fors. so now we found pay-fors within the health care bill, and i think pay-fors that would be supported by the american people. host: sharon from the independent line. go ahead. caller: good morning. i have a couple comments. the bush tax cuts. the republicans there do not stand up for what's actually

going on with the bush tax cuts. it is not for the wealthiest of people. i do my own family taxes. and we save $1,500 from the bush tax cuts. we are middle, middle class. you know, not even upper middle class. we save $1,500, so we're going to be paying $1,500 more. then i'd like to know the health care bill that most of congress and the senate didn't read when they passed it. i heard that there's, which my husband, we're close to retirement age, and he has to pretty old age so we can make ends meet in retirement, i heard there's 3.8% tax when you sell your tax that wasn't there before is in the health care bill. and my last disappoint -- my last point is small businesses. i worked in a small business.

and they had around the 5-30 employees. and they were a custom paint shop. and they -- within a year of me being there, and then i left. they had started a new business inside the other business. and actually i actually reported them on this. they then hired illegals. and i never saw 10t 9 forms that are supposed to go out to show hiring sub contractors. they were illegals. they couldn't speak english or anything. we knew they were illegal, because i did the paperwork and payrolls and everything. and the original company that was there went from around 25-30 employees down to, like, two. host: i think we got your point. guest: the 3.8% tax on the sale of your home would be something

that i don't think is the situation. and here's why i don't think that. typically the sale of a personal resident doesn't have tax consequences. i think up to $500,000 of the value of the home if i remember that rule correctly. we could certainly dive into that a little deeper. but i don't see how that would fit with that provision already existing in law. the 1099 issue on illegals. really the problem there would not be so much that they are not doing the 1099. these folks should be treated as employees. treating them as sub contractors. i believe it would be contrary to the internal revenue code. so trying to slush somebody off as a contractor when in fact, in reality they are an employee and you should do all the with withholding you should do for an employee, therein thries

problem on that issue and the 1099 wasn't really designed to protect folks in these circumstances where real employees , are like i said being sluffed off as subcontractors. they are not. they are employees. host: joe, republican line. go ahead. caller: hello, senator. i wanted to mention that you said the bush tax brought in more revenue, but you didn't quantify that as it's my recollection that during each of those years, the taxes brought in exceeded the congressional budget office by $100 billion -- >> i don't remember the cbo estimates during those years. we could certainly get to that, get to the bottom of that.

i will tell you, though, if you just go online, there's many places where you can find gross amount of revenue that is came into the federal government every year dating back to the beginning of the country. i just looked at it recently, because that stuck in my mind when i was a cabinet member, and lo and behold i was right, why? because the economic base was growing and like the woman who just called in, you know? if we can improve the situation for that middle class small business, and they hire an additional employee, that's an employee that's paying taxes. so why would we want to punish them with paperwork requirement ins a health care bill? so that's what my amendment today is trying to do. it's trying to reappeal that to try to protect those businesses. host: andy, democratic line. caller: good morning. pleased to talk to you this morning.

senator, i wish you would not play politics with the truth now. at least i have great republican friends. senator, while you distorted the facts about president obama running up the biggest deficit. would you please one time. let's make some history. would you tell the people at the time the way you're distorting the facts is your party and president obama did not finance. they did not -- and president bush did not -- they did not put the wars on this budget and neither did they put the drug plan on that. they had the drug plan, which ran into the billions and two wars which ran into the hundreds of billions and when barack obama came in he stopped playing the game y'all like to play called hiding the money. would you give him credit for that? is that right, one final would you give barack obama credit

that he put the two wars and drug policy on the plan that you're saying that's why the budget is high center host: he's refering to medicare part d. guest: andy, here's what i would offer you. back in the early 1990's when the country made a commitment to both afghanistan and iraq. it was a very bipartisan decision that the funding for that. because it was an emergency. 9/11 just happened really very, very unexpectedly, and so in a very bipartisan way, rightly or wrongly, the republicans and democrats decided the best way to approach this is through emergency supplementals. and that's the way it's continued. the part d. plan i believe could have been funded within the budget. a decision was made at that time, and again, part d., i remember being passed in a very bipartisan way, that that actually turned out to be less

expensive than what was anticipated. why? because the bush proposal worked. i'm not remaking history. and then the final piece, gosh, just look at the final budget numbers from the president's own office, the office of management budget. trillion-dollar-plus deficits during the first two years. and like i said, as a mayor, if i would have come out with my first or second budget and said yeah, i know i'm running huge deficits for this city, but the last person who as mayor made me do it, i think the people would have looked at their mayor and said, we made the wrong choice here. you know, the president, as far as the eye can see, under his plan, will run trillion-dollar deficits. nobody, nobody believes that's sustainable. it's not. it's a mess. so what we've got to get back

to is growing our economy, putting our policy ins place not only from a fiscal stand point but an economic stand point, which is why i feel so strongly to reappeal the punishing paperwork on the job creators large and small. host: >> the senate is voting on the johansson amendment right now. you can see live coverage of our companion network, c-span2. we're going to leave "washington journal" right now to go to the u.s. civil rights commission. scholars and advocates will talk about the relationship between discrimination and family structures in the united states. this is live coverage on c-span.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> of pegg, in an attempt to stay within the time constraints, let's get started. and our last panel, james patterson took us through the history of the u.s. department of labor's report entitled "crisis of the negro family, cases for a national action."

this seems prophetic 15 years later. when moynihan wrote his report in 1965, 25% of black children were born out of wedlock. now 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. dr. ronald haskins estimates that over the entire time of childhood, something like 80% of black children experience live in a single-parent family. we believe this has consequences. other research confirms that property rates for children in single-family headed households are five times higher extend those reared in a two-parent homes. interestingly, the rates for whites is now a similar for what it was for whites when that senator moynihan first rang the

alarm. before i go on, i just want to said that this is a very difficult topic. there are a lot of sensitivities. i think it is extremely important that we all make an effort to speak carefully and sensibly about this issue. during this conversation no one is blaming, no one is saying that anyone is less than, but we are saying that overall statistically speaking there are significant adverse consequences that flow from children not being raised in a two-parent household. marriages begin in marriages end. there are instances where marriages should end. the only thing i am suggesting

again is that we take a look at the importance of family, families, and let's look at the consequences of that when you have a significant portion of the population were the children are being cleared in a single- family home. call after saying that, i would like to begin the introduction of our -- after saying that i would like to begin the introduction of our panel. they will discuss the relationship between family structure, race and socio- economic status, including the extension to which family structure continues to decline in labor participation rates. and each of these issues further erode the health of families. and we will start, today we have with us kay hamowitz.

she writes extensively on education and child in america. she is author ever read that book "marriage and cash" in america. she examines the breakdown of marriage in the united states and how it threatens the nation's future. but she has written for mini major publications -- she has written for many major publications. we have here a holder, a professor for public policy at georgetown university. he is the former chief economist at the u.s. department of labor and professor of economics at michigan state university. he has many affiliations in the

research field, and i am sure that he will bring that to bear during this conversation. [inaudible] she was a war that bradlees prize for outstanding intellectual achievement. her work has canvassed the work of topics, including homeland security, policing and racial profiling, homelessness and educational policy to name a few. her writings have appeared in most of the nation's top news dailies. she is author of two books on race and police profiling respectively. she has worked at the federal court of appeals and worked in the executive branch. our next panelist is roland

rolins. he has played a key role in helping the organization established strategic partnerships with businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations across the country. he frequently appears in print and television, representing the national fatherhood initiative. and prior to joining n.f.i. he worked for goldman sachs. he served on the father of a task force of the white house aide based neighbor partnership. he has also served as a board member for the national campaign to prevent teenager and unplanned pregnancy.

on that bill, we will begin. we will go straight down the line and begin with professor holder. >> thank you, and good morning. as german reynolds and i am a labor economist. i know about employment and jobs than have to change marriage rates, but i have read some of that literature. i want to make a couple of points about that, and try to have broader view at about why trends have gone this way. let me start with the points. it seems that all the speakers have taken for granted that simple. hud has a really negative effect on young people growing up in those families. -- thini think that has really d

a negative of back on young people growing up in those families. you have hadwe know that that ae highly correlated with growing up in a single-family. that does not prove that the single-parent is causing this. it remains in question, how you sort those things out? frankly, these young people bring many other deficits with them in their personal life and based many other structural barriers. can we disentangle what pieces were caused by single parents or other problems? is surprisingly difficult to do that. after decades of people trying to do that, they have identified how hard it is to identify.

i will cite one well-known study in the quarterly journal of economics. the compared scissors that were left in the same family, low- income families. they compared the sister who had a teen pregnancy and the one that did not. the sister who did not get pregnant did a little bit better, but not that much better. they come from low-income families with many other carriers and many other challenges, and it is those things, as well as single parent, that contributes to the problems. my point is not the structural family does not matter, it does, but we had to think about it broadly interacting with other challenges if we're all and that any hope of turning this around. if you believe this is a bad trend, what explains it?

as an economist i have a real trouble with culture. i do not know what that means. when you talk about attitude and behavioral norms, i do understand that. i am actually -- my views are very consistent with governor paterson said in the previous panel. i think the economic changes in the cultural factors interact very important. the civil rights era, which is an era of rising expectations, has coincided with a very dramatic changes in the labor markets. the truth is that good jobs have been disappearing for less educated men, good paying jobs, have been disappearing for educated men for almost the entire civil rights era.

you see this for wightman, latino men, but it has had less educated black men very hard. -- you this for white men, latino men, but it has hit less educated black men very hard. there is a whole literature analyzing why that has occurred. technological change. the weakening of institutions that has traditionally protected less educated workers. the jobs they needed disappeared and their attempt to adapt to the new labor market are hampered by a whole variety of challenges starting with the achievement gap. the achievement gap attempts to explain that seems to be correlated with going to racially segregated schools and living in racially segregated neighborhoods. not impossible to turn the schools around, but it is more challenging to have good

teachers and administrators work and those schools. once you get to the labor market, there is still discrimination. there is a breakdown of informal networks that traditionally have connected people to good jobs as the young boys see so many of the older males and their families, their brothers, fathers, disappearing completely from the labor market. the networks that connect the people in the labor market are gone. in this country we have denigrated high-quality career technical education. it was not very good in its traditional form. you can understand why people work upset about tracking, but in fact, we have good, high- quality academic versions of

career technical education starting with career economies. look closely at the evidence. it is stunning. they did not preclude going on to college. they quite in the range of options. -- they have quite a range of options. my view is that some young people have lost hope because they did not perceive opportunity to make it in the labor market. that is very fertile soil for all of the other be neighbors to develop. there is a whole process that occurs, not only people withdrawn from school in the labor market, but withdrawn from a whole set of mainstream behavior's and institutions like marriage and like living within the law. you see this whole pattern of high school dropout rates, deterioration and labor force

participation, along with the rise and incarceration and their rise of being identified as an on custodial parent. one-third of all young black men end up incarcerated. the stunning #, they odds are you'll end up in prison 221. -- two to one. as you come out of prison with a criminal record and do our getting your earnings tax and a very high rate, it is almost impossible to reconnect to the labor market in a serious way. what does this mean for policy? again, i do not know how to change marriage rates and childbearing rates, but then as something about education and employment. i think it starts with creating the perception and reality that there is opportunity for these

young people in the education system and labor market. and we have heard a lot about harlem children. i'd like all of those programs. -- i like all of those programs. more broadly beneath efforts to improve the quality of teaching and curriculum in segregated, lower-income neighborhoods and we need to broaden that and bring back career technical education so people have range of options. there is an effort to prevent disconnection along all of the dimensions that we talk about. we used to have employment and education -- employment training programs. those have trouble to almost nothing and the federal budget. the truth is not all of them were very good or successful, but some of them work. we need to rebuild their education and work force system.

we need secondary schools working within the system of workforce development so that young people seek the job opportunities that do exist out there if they complete a program of opprobrious steady and appropriate skill building. -- , a program of appropriate study inappropriate skill building. -- a program of opprobrious stuappropriate study and appropriate skill building. finally, some men will go that route. some will become offenders. there are reforms in the criminal justice system, the

child support system that could improve their opportunities. when need to help them reconnect a society when they leave prison, not put additional barriers. the earned income tax credit, which has been so successful at subsidizing low income mons to go into the labor market, we need a similar thing extended to non-custodial dad's so that they face a better set of incentives, as well as opportunities to do the right thing and connect to the labor market and take more responsibility for the children they father. thank you. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. markoff be needed.

-- more coffee needed. i need more encouragement. i am delighted to be with you today. a core part of what we're focused on is really trying to connect fathers to their kids hart to hart, and a big part of our strategy is focused on skill building and really hoping that speed that best that they can be boiled -- and really helping dad be the best dads they can be. we found that nearly half of the father is that we surveyed said they did not have the skills that they needed. then we ask a question to what degree did you feel replaced by mom or some other guy? we found that over half said they were replaced by mom or some other guy. you put those together and it really speaks to a significant issue that we need to address.

qúlet me just start quickly wia definition. this is from my perspective. it is not an academic definition. it is the way i thought about the whole civil rights issue for a long time. for me, when we talk about civil rights, it really has a perspective of this notion of being able to basically self- determination, the notion that in the civil society we have an ability to control ourselves and to go after things and we have an opportunity to make choices that will lead to success, happiness, of the month, and all of those types of things. civil rights is about the notion of self-determination and the notion that are rightly determined salt will not be denied these kinds of

opportunities. -- that a rightly-determined self will not be denied these kinds of opportunities. i rented a miniseries by arthur haley. it is about him finding out that he was connected to a slave. i remember renting this video and there is a scene in the video -- there are couple of scenes that most people remember. one is when the slaves was first captured and he turned his naive me to toby. i think for a lot of people they remember that scene and what it meant. there is another scene in that movie, which i think actually

illustrates the point of this series, and i think it leads to the perspective that we are talking about today. and there is a scene that where he has run away several times. he is caught, and each time he is caught he is punished so finally they cut his foot off. when they do that, he is an opportunity to meet bell, one of the other slaves. she nurtures him and get him a job driving the carriage for the master because she knows he has this desire to run. one day he is putting the horses away in teaand hears the beat os drumb, so h, so he follows the beach and bynes another slave

playing the drums the old man tells him on a certain day this be will play and that will mean that we're going to run. he runs back and tells bell. she says, "oh, my gosh." she said my first husband was killed. she lets him know that he is about to be a father. andtob toby says i am not going to run. the baby is born and they had the tradition that their car to take the baby into the night air intak. when he takes the baby into the air, what does he here? kebbel here's the be as well. she comes running out of the house. -- bell hears the bellat as

well. she says to him, the drums, the drums. this is your home. he stiffens up and says this is not my home, and he is absolutely determined. she just melts into a puddle of tears. he says but this is my child, and we are family. he wraps his arms around her and walks are back in. then he begins to tell his daughter the story of their history. for me, that is an important point. it is the child's that his group is all about. here's a man with the social rights, no civil rights, but took the one thing that has the ability to do, the notion around self-determination. that is the civil rights movement right there. the ability to stay.

in terms of the work i do, the statistics and all the other stuff, at the end of the day, it is about individuals making a certain decision that the government cannot take from you, nobody can take from you. you can decide within yourself that i am determined to stay. from my perspective, that is what this is about. what does this have to do about the whole so rights than? i really think that when you look at the statistics, a part of this, -- i can tell you that the father of a teenage mother that the notion of being able to stay in determining to do that is one of the most powerful things. i think from a cultural perspective, i think that as part of what the challenge is, that the drumbeat is not happening.

my voice heard that drumbeat from their fault there. i-- my boys heard that drumbeat from their father. . i think it is really important, a cultural perspective that we are communicating this message, because it is a powerful one. we have a powerful message in the white house. the whole notion that the president being a different father than the one he had. that is because he is married to michelle. if she was in the white house and and he was an outhousin an , they would not have that connection. i found it really interesting, there is a memorial in the annapolis, maryland. it is the kunta kente alex

hailey memorial. it says the strength teaches universal lessons, including survival through based, strength 3 family, and wisdom through forgiveness. strength through family. it is the strength through family, particularly in the african-american community is really what got us through slavery. i believe sincerely that it is the strength through the family that we must recapture again. thank you very much. a[applause] >> thank you. i am very honored to be at the u.s. civil-rights commission. i never thought i would be having such an opportunity in my

life and be with such an extraordinary panel. i am delighted to see that there seems to be an emerging consensus already at this conference about the crucial importance of family breakdown in understanding the black situation today. rather than repeating on a more general basis on that topic, i thought i would get a case study of one city of where i think these issues can be seen very clearly, and that is to talk about youth violence in chicago. and the political and media response to it. i think that response is emblematic of our society's refusal to acknowledge much less address, the most important factor behind inner-city crime. last september a cell phones video of a group of chicago teenagers beating a student to

death when they are rowent vira. because doggo was so closely associated with the obama administration and the olympics, the media ignored the most interesting part of this story, however, the fact that the killing occurred in the very south side neighborhoods where barack obama had so famously work as a community organizer in the 1980's in roseland. had the press dain to take note of that fact, it might have uncovered a tragic past of myopia regarding the primary cause of urban violence. when obama arrived in chicago in 1984, you'd killings were already away of life. -- yotuuth killings were already

away of life. and 1987, 57 chicago children were killed by gunfire. neither obama nor the political establishment have either the insight or the courage to address the most important context of the spiralling youth violence, family breakdown. 75% of chicago's black children born at of wedlock in 1984. and while media reports on youth violence, occasionally mention the mother of the perpetrators or the victim, it was absolutely taboo to ask where is the fall there? that to aboo continues unchanged today. obama never makes a connection between the disappearance of the father and a social dysfunction that was engulfed in chicago's south side.

when obama sees boys engaging in vandalism, she askhe asks, "whee are the social workers or the politicians that will take care of them? i do not mean to single him out for special criticism. he was no different from any other community activists then or now or politician for that matter. the pattern of youth crime that was already established during obama chicago years in the 1980's continue through the next 2.5 decades. in 1994, an 11-year-old member of the black disciples gain killed a girl while shooting at a and paralyzing a rival gang member. they then executed him fto

prevent him from testifying in court. and so it was with the beating last september. and the 35-year-old mother of the 18-year-old who stomped albert on the head while she was light on the ground unconscious told me that her son's father was "not ready to be a strong black role model in his son's life." the younger brother of the 18- year-old assailant has a different father. he, too, is absent from the home. the father of the big dumb solidary and once the day she was -- the father of the victim saw him once, the day she was bohe was born. it means that many children in chicago are now uncertain about

the extent of their family ties. one girl that i spoke to thinks that she has 10 siblings by five fathers. but she was not quite sure. every city in america has a strong connection between race, a legitimate ec -- illegitimacy, and violent crime. in cook county, the black illegitimacy rate is now up to 79%. professor patterson it can go higher÷z, unfortunately, then . the black illegitimacy rate in inner-city chicago would be higher still. in chicago, black youth creat 87% of gun violence.

the white illegitimacy rate in cook county is 15% sen. anthis disparity is identical in new york. the black illegitimacy rate is over 78%. blacks commit 80% of all shootings, " there are 24% of the population. the white illegitimacy rate in new york is 7%. blacks commit less than 2% of all shootings, though there are 35% of the population. nationally the black illegitimacy rate is around 71%. black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the rate of a white and hispanic males of that same age combined. we're not going to solve the

black crime problem unless we can reconstitute the plaque tell black family. i would respond to professor oldhollzer that growing up in a culture where marriage is disappeared that would affect one child and the other identically. the tragic effects of a culture of religion is the -- at illegitimacy are not limited to one aspect of a child's life. the greater problem is boys growing up in a culture where men are no longer expected to raise their own children. in such a world, and boys still to learn the most basic lesson of responsibility. marriage civilizes men.

free from that necessity, boys never need to become reliable breadwinners and stable adults. there is no greater handicaps that affects black children's life chances than the fact that there overwhelmingly more likely than the children of any other racial and ethnic group to grow up without a father and to grow up in the world where marriage is disappeared. i would suggest as well that that affects the work prospects as well, that they have not developed those habits. we could give every fatherless black child his own social worker and government checks, and we still will not eliminate the crime and achievement gaps. for while it seemed like barack obama new this also. speaking on chicago's outside in 2008, he addressed the

connection between fatherless and youth violence. "if we're honest with ourselves, we will admit that too many fathers are missing from too many lives and homes. " yet when he dispatched eric holder arctic 2009 in the hope that this using the p r crisis of the shooting, these administration officials bought only the usual no strums about haiti collective responsibility for youth violence and the prpromise of more federal spending. what i would do is to spend every waking minute trying to read alibis fathers. -- revitalize fathers. we need to be able to say that

there are fantastic, courageous single mothers who are able on their own to raise law-abiding civilized boys, but on average boys need fathers. a cultural needs to recognize the importance of fathers. this will require taking on the feminist myth that women can do it all. thank you very much. [applause] >>ok0c as you are about to heare girls at the manhattan institute think very similarly. ñri want to reiterate a point me at the beginning that it is nice to hear and see.

i believe it is absolutely central to the future of black america. there is a connection between a family structure and racial disparity. it is difficult to finally determined that just from a social science. let's just remind ourselves of what the social science has said. it is said that kids in married couple families -- this is not just about blacks at all. that kids in married families get better grades. they are more likely to graduate from high school. they are more likely to go to college and graduate. they are far less likely to be port and abuse drugs, commit crime, to become pregnant at an early age and to become single

parents themselves. these benefits are true for kids when you control the family income. what else have researchers discovered? that have found that on average married men at work more hours. they make more money, and they achieve more seniority at their jobs. they have shown us that married people are healthier and live longer, and no, it is not as the old joke have is, married men and women actually live longer, it does not just feel that way. [laughter] y? why is there a connection between marriage and child outcomes? experts have had a few ideas about that. one of them, and this is the idea that is shared by most people, is what i call the

strength in numbers theory. it makes some sense. let me explain it to you. married couples have two incomes. they have two brains to problem- solving. as to waking up at night. it makes sense. there is a problem with this theory. children of stepfamilies also have peace, but their outcomes are not much different according to the research, then those from single-mother households. they are less likely to be po or. that is true probably because they have the benefit of two incomes. they have problems with drugs, early sexual activity, less likely to graduate from high school and college. the strength in numbers theory

only takes us so far. i would like to suggest that we think about this in a different way. that is the question of why marriage matters? why marriage matters, particularly for children and for men. it is not the individual couples, per cent, it is the idea of marriage or what heather referred to as the culture of marriage. marriage is what anthropologists call a schuman is universal. it exists and has excess and every known human society. -- marriages what anthropologists call the human universal. it is what society expects from them. i think what happens as a result of that is that marriage is the way the society's provide a matter of life and models of behavior. -- provide a map of life and

models of behavior. marriage carries with it debt assumption that the couple is committed to each other, that they will be people to each other, that they will raise their children together. women who bear children have a natural connection to their offspring, but marriage is the way kolter has announced that men are also tied to their children and tells them what the responsibilities towards them are. and i do not need to remind you that people today are failing to live up to these norms. nevertheless, by walking down the aisle, by getting married, people are saying this is how i aspire to live. let's think of marriage as a map. by looking at to 23 year-old men. joe lives in the world where

marriage continues to be the norm. he assumes he will marry one day. he is probably not very conscious of it. he is not walking around saying my name is joe and i subscribe to the idea of marriage. he may not think you will get married until the age of 40 or until he is 50. he may be terrified of ever getting married, but he walks around with the notion deepen his brain that being part of the family, having a children reaching having children, it means getting married. -- having children means getting married. job number to find himself asking several questions. -- joe number two finds himself asking several questions. sadly, joe realizes that carol is not the one that he wants to

marry. after a few more months or maybe a year, because he thinks he is young, he breaks off the relationship or maybe she does when he realizes he is just not that into her. the relationship is over and they move on. joe number two drew up without a marriage mpa. -- map. his mother never married his father, who was only an occasional visitor in his life. his aunts and uncles never married. his friends are not married. he has also been dating carol number two for a few months. he is not asking questions like in my serious? as a someone i can imagine being with the rest of my life? will soon make a good mother? he is not also asking how will i support this woman and the children to be.

instead, he is in a state of direct. he lets things happene and he ad carol have a baby boy together. he adores his son. takes into the park. but soon he and carol karr are fighting a lot. he has been eyeing a woman named betty. she is there with her two year- old daughter. i do not need to tell you how the idea is going to play out. having children with more than one man or woman has become commonplace. i think absence of the map poses a special problem for men, and explain something about the difficulties black men are

having in school, in the labor force, and the criminal justice systems, and in their role as fathers. women had children to take care of. young, black single mothers to go back to college, and there are an increasing number of them, almost always cite their children as the reason for their ambition. they want to give their children better lives and provide a good model for them. without marriage, men become outsiders to family life. without marriage, men's connection to their children is fragile and the responsibilities they. why go back to school? weiss said the in the first place? nobody needs them. -- why go back in the first place? i would add the real lack of hope has to do with the fact that he has no social roles to play in the family. thank you.

[applause] >> i would like to thank members on this panel. i thought that the comments made were outstanding. i would like to open this up with a question for kay. yes, kay, this is directed at you. how do we go about resuscitating the ideal of marriage in black communities? i am not sure we have ever faced this type of problem before. the closest i can get is the turn of the 20th century, but how do we do this, and also, who does it? who takes the lead? is that the government?

is that the church? is the other community-based organizations? i toss that out for you. >> thanks a lot. isn't that the subject of the next panel. [laughter] i am joking, but it is really an impossible question to answer finally. i think one thing we have to do, the first thing we have to do, is to make this the primary topic of discussion in our policy world, even if there are not specific policy answers to the problem. and as heather was pointing out, this has been a topic that people are really shied away from. as you mentioned when you started the panel, it is a very difficult topic. it is easier to not talk about it. there does seem to be an assumption that by talking about

it we're blaming individuals. i do not see it that way. i see as a cultural problem. -- i see this as a cultural problem. i see this was trying to create a sense of consensus about this topic. having put forward any change deliberately -- there have been stories in history where it happened through religious revival. can that happen now? i have no idea. but the first thing that has to happen is an open and honest discussion of this sort that morning and started many years ago. -- that professor moynihan started many years ago. >> there are times where the social scientistce has to catch.

i think that many of us see a problem that flows out of these families that are missing an important player, the father. in terms of that despair that you mentioned and then dropping out of mainstream society. i know that you crunch numbers. i also know you have accumulated a fair amount of wisdom over the years in this area. do you have any thoughts on how to get the men back into a family setting? >> you are right, just because

the social sciences have not proved it statistically does not mean it is not true. i do not to argue it is not true. and all of these things -- studies that control for this and that's, you get a lot smaller. there are a lot of things they cannot control for. it is a dead end. i think there are things we can all agree on. i senthink responsibility and self discipline are very important in life. i do not know how you teach about responsibility go hand-in- hand with opportunity. i do not know that any of us would have developed responsibility with housing and passout a path of opportunity.

you have to have the belief that it will lead somewhere. by the way, the young women meeting those young men do not regard them as being marriageable material. these young men who never held a steady job for very long. the whole thing, teaching responsibilities without having the opportunity component is a dead end, but we have to have growth. the gaps are very early in life. before children step foot in kindergarten, coming at of low- income or minority families they are already way behind in terms of achievement. the schools exacerbate baghdad. i think if we can all agree that opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand and the message is to have to improve both of them, we can all agree on that, and that creates a path forward. had we prevent the achievement

gaps from starting so early in life? by the time that people become adolescents and much more susceptible to the call to messages that you described, we have to of the counter message. -- we have to have this counter message. you can become a machinist. you can go to college. and by the way, your odds of completing that are much better if you read the irresponsibly ir personal life. then you have a message where all of the key components are there in the appropriate policy pieces can support that message. i think that is the way we need to think about it. >> i think those are interesting points, but it seems to me you keep importing into your analysis precisely the behavioral issues that one could

use to counteract your charge. if i can simplify it, an argument that we have to look first at the jobs and economic picture to start explaining the breakdown and culture, because you said yourself that the disparities begin by the time the child is 3 years old. this is long before that child has any sense of what you would claim is an inadequate job picture. i would say the problem begins and the culture of child rearing, and the fact that young boys, you said, have not held steady jobs -- again, that may come from the fact that they have not developed those habits of self discipline. we have in many cities today a very powerful control group, which is immigrants, who come

with less financial capital then many blacks today, and yet they are finding jobs. a. . opportunities i would say are there. society is bending over backwards to bring people in, but they don't have the social

capital to take advantage of them. >> there ones was a world where young men without college degrees could make it and do well and that was the world in which stable families often flourished when they faced the option of finding a good paying job. that world is disappearing. there is scholarships and affirmative action. if you are a young man, number one, reading at the eight grade level in 12th grade and seeing no jobs anywhere in your neighborhood for a person of your skills, these sound like empty ideas because people don't see those pathways in that situation and we are talking about young men who haven't seen any of the men in their families, neighborhoods, communities getting these jobs. so they don't see where it's going to come from.

i'm a child of immigrants. immigrants have hope of a cross generations making it and there is a strong road map and not all do. mexican americans, two, three generations still lag behind. it's very different. and employers actually prefer immigrants in the low-wage jobs because they think they are happy. and if you grow up in a minimum-wage job looks very good and will motivate you to work hard and give you that sense of opportunity. if your family has been generations and that's the best you see, not going to motivate you in the same way. i think what we can infer from the immigrant experience is fairly limited. >> i talked to many in the inner city and they say, we want work ethic and show us every day on time, i'm willing to train them. they don't have to have many

skills. there are factories in new york city that are desperate to find people. and that's what immigrants bring more than anything else is a work ethic. >> exclusively low wage jobs. >> i'm going to have to step in between you two at least for the moment. [laughter] >> mr. warren. the organization does great work. this message is stayed. how do you go about delivering the message and can it be replicated? start off by telling us what you do. >> it was alluded to at the start. our whole strategy is focused on this notion of helping fathers have a more holistic view of what their role actually is. and i think just going back to this marriage argument and i'm

newer to this game, but when i first started doing this work, i never heard it before. so i said what is it? when i got the definition of what it was, it was defined around economics. guys' marriageable. that doesn't make him marriageable. professional athletes would be the best husbands in the world because they have the economic piece, but it's the culture that many of them come from that doesn't lead to that. marriage has to be defined to be a much broader word that includes the kinds of things we are talking about, skills, relationship skills, communication skills, parenting skills, that what marriage is about, not the ability to just bring a check. as long as we talk about it in that context, it will tell a guy

who is unemployed or underemployed, you have no role here. part of my strategy is, you have to talk about what good fathers do. namely three things. they provide, nurture and guide, provide, nurture and guide. guys get the whole provide stuff that the culture is wired around it. guys get that whether they have jobs. if you don't provide you don't bring nothing to the table and therefore you have no reason to be involved. but if you broaden -- what good fathers will do, they nurture, having the skills that you need in order to be a good effect tiffer parent and instilling values in your kids. so even if you are unemployed or underemployed, you still have the ability to do those other things. and to the degree you do those,

those are the things that affect the kid. my father wasn't at my football games. those are the things that got me to leave the lucrative world of goldman sachs. i think that's part of the problem we have. i want to make one other point. in terms of this whole debate, guys are pretty concrete creatures. we like stuff to be defined and laid out. and i think one of the challenges that we have that comes with this whole notion of marriage and relationships, part of the problem is there is not a definition of what that is. i'm here in washington now. let's talk about healthy relationships. first there is a healthy marriage. well, what is that, healthy relationship? i don't know what that means. what does that mean? if you tell me a healthy

marriage, does that mean i sleep with other women or not? does that mean i should maybe take a lesser job so you can move forward. does that mean i save towards retirement or raise my kids? i have no idea. but these are all questions that anybody who has sex with somebody else has to answer at some point if a child comes out of that process. so words mean stuff. and part of the reason we are seeing this erosion, it's not defined. it's not defined in a way people can get their arms around it and that's the biggest problem around the marriage thing. and going back to this notion about labor with opportunities, i get that. i go back to the kente thing was. he knew what it was to be married. and it was those seeds that were planted then that gave us this reality.

i'm focused on that. because that's very doable. i will say this one last point. my mother was a teen mom and they were married and got divorced very early on in the process. one of the powerful things that my mother did, which i didn't realize what was happening until much later in life, is she never denigrated the institution of marriage even though it didn't happen for her. she instilled in me the importance of that. when i got my girlfriend pregnant. i'm not sure how -- i'm working on that piece, but it took place. we have been married for 30 years. when i got her pregnant, in my script was this whole notion of marriage because my mother instilled that in me. people get all twisted and say i'm not married -- kids sit in a chair and across them is somebody or nobody, but who communicates a set of values.

even if marriage hasn't worked out for you and it's -- your kid is still go to go have to make a decision about this. and i haven't met anyone yet -- my mom is a single mom -- i haven't heard anyone say, i hope my daughter is a single mother. and i hope he will get her pregnant and leave her. [laughter] >> i'm just saying. are you here? if that's not what we want, then we need to be communicating, yes, ok, your dad and i were not married. but let me tell you about the institution and what that means. you see a young boy going through that process and when i talk to single moms, i say what kind of father is he going to be? no one talked to me about what kind of father i was going to be. >> hold that thought. >> i'll keep talking. i'm done.

[laughter] >> mismacdonald your discussion of the connection between the lack of fathers and crime i find interesting. iowa sitting down thinking about any -- i was sitting down thinking about my own son. we teach our boys roles whether it be the formal lessons or not and we teach them among other things, when it's appropriate to employ violence and we teach them in most cases and we teach them that violence is not one of the first tools in the tool box that you reach for. there are defined, limited instances where society as a whole and fathers in general will tell their boys it's ok. having boys that don't get that lesson and don't get that reinenforcement -- well, you are

suggesting it results in out of control crime rates. so that's the challenge. if the father is not in the home, if the message doesn't come from the family unit, if the message is not coming from the community, how is that message introduced, this message of restraint, this conversation and lesson over violence when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate? are >> well, i'm a big fan of the boy scouts. i think they are a totally unjustly maligned group and one that is just ignored and there are other possible organizations out there, but they work to instill a code of valor and

manlyness and a belonging and the inner city troops that i have attended just break your heart in the beauty of this effort to give kids a sense of aspiration and structure and looking up to their scout master. so there are organizations out there that can, i think, work as a remote surrogate for paternal discipline, but again, i would emphasize it's not just the lack of for any individual boy that his father is not at home. and we've heard the sort of standard conceit that boys then growing up without a father will tend to gravitate towards gangs

where they can get that surrogate male authority. but again, the problem is not just the boy doesn't have a father, but he's growing up in a world where marriage is not assumed. and this gets both to kay's script and roland's script, which is that all those moments trying to think about how do i make myself attractive towards a woman, how am i go go to be a bread winner and the support and nurturing that roland talks about, they never have to think about that. and so the natural unrulyness of males and the desire to live for the moment never gets restrained towards the future goal of marriageability. and how do we start value

orizing this, and this may be naive, but we have changed mores, but how many campaigns are there against teen smoking. and this is a problem. teen smoking a bad thing. but i would argue there -- this is trivial in comparison. if you want to talk about health risks, look at the rate of death by homicide among black males just is higher than death by lung cancer. >> heather, i'm sorry, but i have not been good with the time, so i have to break in. >> public campaigns, i would argue that every subway in new york, if they are going to have a message, have something value ororizing fathers and change that.

>> i'm chair of the california advisory committee to the commission. my question is for heather and kay, what is financing this fatherless culture? something has changed between the moynihan report and now. professor holzer suggests a big role for the earned income tax credit and how would you modify these incentives? >> well, there are those who argue that it was welfare that financed the rise to single mootshood. there is something to that. but we had -- motherhood. there is something to that. and i thought this would change marriage rates and it has not. the assumption was that women once they found they could not rely on government money, public

money, would look at men a little more carefully, the men that they had children by, more carefully as potential providers. they did not do that. they did go to work for themselves. and did fairly well, at least on average. there are some problems still at the margins. but, and, so, the answer to that is, we have had this enormous shift in the economy that harry has referred to, which has made it possible for women to have opportunities out there that they never had before and in some ways, a lot of the jocks that opened up are -- jobs that opened up are more female friendly than male friendly. what is financing single motherhood now is the service economy. >> next. >> my name is richard wilson,

chair of the connecticut committee and professor of social science at uconn. we have heard all morning a correlation or causal relationship between family structure on the one hand and educational attainment on the other. i would like you to consider the evidence to the contrary. as professor patterson mentioned this morning, in western europe, there has been a strong increase of children born out of marriage and increase in educational attainment. math scores in united kingdom, netherlands, denmark, have been going up and marriage rates have been going down. this suggests to me family structure is not the only factor and not the most important factor perhaps and we should look at the things around supporting the family that goes on in the western european model. for instance, there are very

good public schools. there is universal health care, there are unemployment benefits and range of government programs that provide stability for parents, be they single parents or not, which support the family. now, unless you're going to look at those kinds of programs and i would argue it's cheaper to educate than incarcerate, but unless you are going to spend the money to support families and provide a supportive context for families, then you are missing a lot of the picture. and i would suggest that simply to pass moral comment on family structures, well, it's cheap and free. passing moral comment is free and doesn't cost us anything. if you're not going to spend the money on providing security for families and stability, it comes across as demoralizing.

>> i just have a question just related to that, because i have heard that argument multiple times and i guess for me, what is the responsibility of men? because to me, you can say, ok -- at the end of the day, we're here in the united states, right and the reality is, there is a whole bunch of other things that go along with that in terms of the american experience. my question back is -- because i think -- how now shall we live, what's my responsibility? if i get a woman pregnant, what am i supposed to do, am i supposed to make sure that the government structure is there to take care of my child? what am i really supposed to do? because at the end of the day, that's the other piece and not

what am i supposed to do if i live in europe, what am i supposed to do if i live here today. and when i here the statistics about the young boys getting killed in the community, i'm in tears. this is the real world. tomorrow, a boy needs to hear something from someone that says how am i supposed to live as a man, now. [applause] >> and from my perspective that's what this is all about. that's the question. i'm dealing with boys today -- and they're asking me that question. i can't give them what is happening in europe. >> ok, roland. >> harry. >> this is practical every day. you have to dell them this is

how you should live. >> we could carry this on later. professor holzer. >> i agree and disagree with the comment. not to get into the moralizing piece. cow has beentation in europe is a much more stable settlement. and if we can make it as stable here as is in europe, that's fine. we don't need a priest or a rabbi to bless it. but that makes the comparison with europe. this is about fatherhood and not marriage per se. the other problem -- and i agree i think the social supports are very important, but the difficulty of trying to take the european model and put it in the united states is number one, those social structures are supported by very high tax rates than the united states.

i don't see the current political system in the united states as pim willing to embrace european tax rates. and european model, they have difficulties on the employment side, in some, not all of those countries, but the dependency of people to drop out of the labor market has been very high. i like some of the supports provided, it is not very good. it has pluses and minuses. >> we are cutting into lunch. i'm going to cut it off here unfortunately. i apologize. let's take a break for lunch. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> our coverage of the u.s. commission on civil rights will continue in a moment. in the next panel, business leaders and scholars discuss the legal and social tools available for fighting discrimination. live coverage when the discussion gets under way here on c-span. right now on c-span3, impeachment trial of a federal judge accused of taking bribes and lying under oath. the last impeachment trial before the u.s. senate was 1999. witnesses are testifying today. the house returns from its summer recess today. members will consider eight bills, including a resolution marking the ninth anniversary of

9/11 and a measure to let the navy secretary sign multiyear contracts for f-18 fighter jets. and the senate is spending the day on small business loans. this morning, "washington journal," looked into that measure. >> with the house and senate back in session, congressional conicle, click on congress and access the speakers, remarks and videos with the mid-term elections, it's a great resource for anyone who follows congress and it's free any time. watch what you want, when you want. >> c-span's local content vehicles are traveling the country visiting communities and congressional districts as we look at some of the most closely

election races leading up to the mid-term election. >> first and foremost, right now, we have to have an agenda for american jobs and a lot of what i have spent doing is trying to get washington, both parties, to be a little bit more focused on growing things in america again instead of what i felt both parties were focused on before, helping the financial sector enough, it will trickle down. >> the candidates are tom perriello, a freshman democrat, who was elected in the wave of victories during obama's victory in 2008 against perriello is robert hurt, a republican state senator, southern part of the district and jeff clark, a tea party member and independent businessman.

the virginia race is getting a lot of national attention because republicans see perriello is one of the most vulnerable democrats in congress given that he represents a somewhat conservative district and he has voted in favor of obama's major initiatives, health care, cap and trade, stimulus and so on and two years ago, he was elected by the smallest margin of any congressional race in the country. they think -- the republicans are seeing this as a pickup. but democrats say that tom perriello's a fighter and tough campaigner and because he supported the same initiatives that he is giving the support of national democrats just as national republicans are trying to take him down. in 2008, perriello, who is a young lawyer from the charlottesville area, he challenged goode and beat him.

this is the closest margin that year in congress. some people say perriello say he rode in on the obama wave. while certainly that was a factor, the virginia fifth district is conservative-leaning and mccain won it with 50.6% of the vote that year. it is traditionally a republican stronghold and has become less so but a conservative district that is democrats. it is the size of new jersey and is a triangle shape with the charlottesville region and thomas jefferson's home down to south side of virginia, north carolina border which includes the city of martinsville.

the economy has hit the district hard. the south side has been hit extremely hard and unemployment tops 20%. it's bad but not quite as bad as elsewhere in the district. there is unemployment continues to be a problem throughout the district. there have been a number of foreclosures. people who have their jobs, their pay has stagnated for the last few years. it is a big problem here. tom perriello is a moderate democrat. whereas in the big ticket priorities of obama and the democrats, he voted in favor like health care reform, the cap and trade, clean energy bill. he voted in favor of the economic stimulus bill. so some people say he is a

liberal democrat because he supported the big-ticket items, but on the other hand, he has voted against his party. for example, he doesn't believe that the assault weapons ban should be re-implemented. he is a strong believer in second amendment rights and voted against obama's budgets because it didn't go far enough. robert hurt is a traditional conservative and has been in the general assembly for a number of years. he has been endorsed by the family foundation, the n.r.a., all of the conservative-leaning groups. big part of his message is the federal government spending is out of control in his view, that government regulations have gotten too ownerous and if he was to be working in congress he would work for tax bonuses for businesses and individuals.

his record has been fairly mixed. while he has been a regard r in the legislature, he did break with his party in 2004 and voted for a tax increase to balance the state's budget and took a lot of heat for that at the time and during the republican primary this year as well. jeff clark running against not only the democrat perriello, which embodies the biggest concerns that he talks about, the federal government, what he views as creeping socialism taking over the country, he also has to run against robert hurt, who is an establishment republican who served in the legislature for a number of years. jeff clark has struggled to have his voice heard. hurt doesn't want to allow him into the debates. while they are working that out, whether or not he will be included in any of the candidate forums, it's difficult for him.

the only poll that's come out in the general election shows that perriello is down 20 some points and republican hurt has a sizeable lead. however, that same poll two years ago showed perriello down 30 some points and he came back to win it. if there's anything that we know in the fifth is that things can change quickly and it might be more competitive than it appears. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next panel from the u.s. commission on civil rights will begin at 1:00 eastern after this lunch break. business leaders and scholars discuss the legal and social tools for fighting discrimination. it is hosting a day-long look of what is happening at civil rights now. william raspberry spoke this

morning. and his comments are about a half hour. [applause] >> i want to get started today. maybe a few requests i could make of this gathering and the panel that follows. the first is that we all try as hard as we can to make this a day of discussion, not merely a

resumption of ancient debates and attempt to score points off one another. it's great fun, but there comes a time when scoring points is less important than trying to figure out what we need to do. and third, and i hope you agree with this, that we consider our analyses, our comments and our proposals from the point of view of what is best for the coming generation of american disadvantaged minorities. what's going to work best for them, for our kids. i make these requests not to insult or offend you, but because i have become painfully aware of a dismaying trend that is taking overall our important

discussions, from climate change to health care to, of course, racial equity. and that is the notion that it is enough to separate people into groups, us against them. which means that instead of trying to solve our mutual problems, we concentrate on defeating those we designate as them. which leads us to ex ag engineer ate -- exaggerate our differences as a substitute for thought and to minimize our agreements as no consequence. take our subject today. hardly anyone believes that america has reached some post-racialner vana where it has been erased from institutions and from the hearts of

individuals. we know it's still there. and almost everyone would agree that we what we do as individual minority members and what we encourage our children to do matters a great deal. so my humble and perhaps naive plea this morning is that it's not that you change your minds about what you believe, but that for the next few hours, you accept at least the theoretical possibility that those who disagree with you are not on that account stupid or terrible people, that they might actually have a small point. i don't have much time to get the conversation started so let me set the stage with a small story, powerful no doubt, that i

heard from my father a lot of years ago. a farmer on horseback was hurrying home to the homestead when a sudden downpour turned into a flash flood and because he wasn't sure what else to do, when he came to the stream bordering his farm, he rode the horse right straight through the stream. well, the situation was worse than he anticipated. and the result was that the horse and rider were both swept down the stream, both nearly drowning before they managed to climb to safety and return to their homestead. and after that, the farmer couldn't induce that horse to cross that creek even when the flow was just a trickle.

my dad's point was that knowledge and experience are useful only if they are tempered by judgment. i make a slightly different point this morning. if you compare that stream to racism in america, then too many of us african americans are like that horse. their personal and handed-down memories of life-limiting racism are so vivid, their recollections of can't cross here, denial of opportunities so strong, that they dare not enter the stream even when it is relatively calm. they stand on the far bank perhaps cursing the water and slugging at the way things are.

they remember futility and danger won't let them notice that the water isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. it was bad, all right. and more than a few of our race drowned in the attempt to cross it. and now you're thinking, here comes the silly old man to tell us that the stream's dried up. well, no, i'm not. i recently attended a two-day conference on the difficulties facing young black men and the speakers were uniform in their view that racism ace alive and well in america. one responded on the difficulties that young black men face in the market. he said three young men, a black man, white man and hispanic, all carefully matched with education, experience, speech and all of that, through a

series of employers. the white received the best treatment, hispanic, second best and african americans the worst. all three were granted interviews but the white guy was offered a better job and sometimes the black guy was offered a lower job than had been advertised. no, the stream isn't dry. even when some white people think it is. am it only person that remembers that old tv series called "black. white." the one that had black and white families reversing roles? remember how frustrated brian, the black guy, became when bruno, the white guy, refused to see the racism that was so clear to brian. they walked down the street

together and brian would sense the racism and brune' would say, bruno would say what? both men were frustrated. bruno turned to brian and said, you know, you must be looking for racism. and of course, we are looking for it. we pounce on general in louisiana or glenn beck or smart mouth dr. laura until we find the possession that will finally make white people understand what we are complaining about. we are determined to convince white america of what is as a plain as day fact for us. racism abounds. racist stream has not dried up and maybe it never will. the point is this. you become expert at finding

what you spend a lot of your time looking for. whether that is mushrooms, gold nuggets. racism or opportunity. oh, yeah, there is racism out there, but there is also unprecedented opportunity. my mind goes back to that frightened horse. the neglect and failure some of our young people see all around them, the disrespect they often receive from cops and clerks and comics, the low expectations the world seems to have of them, even the looks they encounter, all have convinced them that the stream between them and the better life is a virtual niagara and we who know full well that

the stream is crossable often add to their dread by talking about how racist society still is and how a poor black kid has a better chance winding up dead or in prison than educated. just look at the schools, we'll say. underfunded, poorly maintained, inadequately staffed, who can blame these kids if they fail. we say it for them honestly bleesk that calling attention to racism and unfairness will help them by and solving them of the shame of failure while at the same time affixing the blame on the enemies over there. and what we fail to see is that we are reinforcing their self doubt, their fear of that once raging stream. the danger, i believe, is that

our good intentions may have the effect of discouraging young people, i mean in the literal sense, of taking away their courage to try. conservatives sometimes miss the point that there is a genuine dilemma. it seems fundamentally unfair to take kids who have had none of the material advantages of growing up middle class and secure and to tell them that they must now compete unaided with the children of privilege. but how helpful is it to take these same disadvantaged children and reward them not for achievement, but for effort as though they are participants in some academic special olympics.

some of us point to the underequipped schools and underprepared teachers that are undereducating some of our children as if that is the whole answer. others point to fatherless households or the lack of exertion or through cultural distraction as as though that were the whole answer. well, there have always been both external and internal barriers to racial progress in america. my question is not to focus so clufeclufely on those barriers as those that affect us. everybody has a favorite martin luther king junior quote. and no, i'm not going to have a dream this morning, but i do want to call your attention to a

quote that i think is largely ignored, but that serves to make the points i want to make this morning. he was talking about the very kinds of issues i'm talking about, and he said this. in short, he said, we must work on two fronts. on the one hand, we must continue to resist the system, which is the basic cause of our lagging standards. on the other hand, we must work constructively to improve the standards themselves. there must be -- and i love this -- there must be a concentration between attacking the causes and healing the effects. why don't they put that on someone's cornerstone, because that really says it all?

save you a little time, jay, because these things tend to grow so i'm going to cut this short. what do we tell our children? what should we tell our children and grandchildren? yes, steel them against the shock of racism and let them know that it is very likely something untoward will happen and remind them of battles overcome and point out to them that some of us, in fact most of us who have achieved some measure of success in this world likely have some mud on our boots for crossing that not yet dry stream, but we crossed it. tell them those things, but tell

them also this. the salient fact of black life in america is not denial of opportunity for those who would grasp it. the new and powerful truth of our situation is simply this. the stream is crossable. the stream is crossable. that's great good news and may be true for most of us for the first time in our history in this country. and we treat it as an inconvenient fact. what powerful white people use -- whatever they used to think about black boys and girls, corporate america today needs

them, but needs them smart and curious and computer savvy and all the obvious things that so many of our boys and girls are not getting or not becoming. powerful trade unions made the mere willingness to work hard sufficient to guarantee a good income. these days, you have to know something and show yourself ready to learn a good deal more. i'm not talking here of intellectual genius but willingness to make the assertion academically that good athletes make physically. we can do it. some of our young people are making that exertion. i was recently in san diego at the annual conference of the national association of black journalists and even at a time

when journalism is struggling to redefine itself, where jobs are fewer in the business and less emphasis on diversity and when the future of journalism itself is as clouded as it has ever been in my lifetime, these young people are doing what they can to retool themselves. they are learning new skills, making new contacts, calling on us old heads in the business for help and advice. it's an interesting thing about these young people, they have parents or mentors who understand the importance of being prepared, even in the face of incomplete opportunity. i'm encouraged by parents and mentors who sacrifice and cajole and nag their children into trying hard and to being twice as good as we used to say, if

that's what it takes. and i am deeply distressed by the young people who are not striving, whose parents focus on how unfair things are and not how possible things are. they are self destructive. and they have given up on white people when in fact they have given up on themselves, and languish on straight corners and prisons, not because they prefer those haunts but because they doubt that much else is possible. a wise man once said, whether you believe you can succeed or believe you cannot, you're right. well, life is still a crystal clear case, but success is

possible. it is this fact that our children must hear from us and take to heart. even while we continue to consider and work against racial unfairness. it is unwise and untrue to tell our children that because barack obama is in the white house, the world they inhabit is suddenly fair. but i think it is worse not to tell them that the waters have, in fact, gone down where crossing is possible. >> let me talk about a lady where in financial straits asked the lord to win the lottery. she prayed.

when they held the drawing at the end of the week, they hadn't won. next week, she is back on are your knees, my son may have to drop out of college, the store is threatening to take my flat-screen tv and you let people less needful and less holy than i am to win major jackpots. lord, i need to win the lottery -- again, nothing. lord, she said the third week, didn't you promise to bear your servants up leth they put their foot against the stone. lord, i'm stone broke. i need to win the lottery. and then in the still of her room, she heard this voice.

cut me a break. buy a ticket. [laughter] >> we have gotten very good at making demands or requests for what we need. we demand that the government improve our schools and employers cut us some slack that white people stop being so racist and it's ok to do that. nothing wrong with that. but while we are demanding that other people do what they ought to do, we need to do what we ought to do. we need to remember, for example, that the most influential educational resource a child can have is a parent who cares. and we need to admit that sometimes parents are the missing ingredient in our children's success.

we need to acknowledge that the culprits in our children's failure often share our skin color, our zip code and sometimes our street address. what shall we tell the children? the stream may not be dry. but the stream is crossable. you can make it. we will help you make it if you try. buy a ticket. thank you, jerry. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> live coverage conference is expected at 1:00 eastern. business leaders and scholars will be discussing legal and social tools for fighting discrimination. right now on c-span three, day two of impeachment trial of a

federal judge. the last trial was in 1999. witnesses are feffing today. the house returns from its summer recess today. members will consider eight bills, including a resolution marking the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and a measure to allow the navy secretary to sign multiyear contracts for f-18 fighter jets. our live coverage starts at 2:00 eastern. this morning, "washington journal" looked at small business loans. sarah palin will be in iowa friday night for the annual ronald reagan dinner in des moines. we will have live coverage here on c-span. every weekend on c-span 3, experience american history tv

starting saturday at 8:00 a.m. eastern, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story, hear historic speeches and eyewitness accounts of events that shaped our nation. top history professors and leading historians delve into america's past. americanhistorytv, all weekend on v span3. >> the lunch break is taking a little bit longer than planned. there will be discussion over the legal and social tools fighting discrimination. we will look at today's primaries under way in seven states. >> voters go to polls. charlie rangel who is running for his 21st term, how have his

ethics trowls affected this race? >> he is having to defend hill self back there in harlem. 40 years in congress, 20 terms, this is the tough primary challenge. but he is still favored going into today partly because he does face primary challenges to sort of split that anti-rangel vote. powell is his challenger. when rangel won his term originally, he beat powell's father for that. he is aiming for a little revenge there. but rangel has been out there campaigning and bill clinton call for him. mayor bloomberg. this is definitely we are watching tonight and it could be a closer margin of victory than he is expected to see. >> let's talk about the delaware

senate race, the candidates running there, christine o'donnell and mike castle. politico reported that outside groups are trying to push castle out. >> this came under our radar after joe miller defeated murkowski and murkowski placed a call to castle saying they are coming for you next. tea party is boosting o'donnell. he is one of the most moderate members of congress. o'donnell, has run many teams. and she was the republican nominee last time in 2008 running against vice president joe biden but never won a race. they are throwing that back. we have seen the republican establishment really come out in favor of castle because they do not believe that they can win this seat without him as the